Veteran journalist Jeff Stein comments on the Trump Administration’s efforts to identify employees who are speaking with journalists without authorization in a paywalled Substack post titled, “Trump & Co’s Polygraph Pandemonium.” Excerpt:
Decades ago, a wise and long serving Justice Department inspector general remarked to me that leak investigations were “a fool’s errand.” By that he meant that they rarely ended in criminal investigations and often led back to the offices of political appointees who had expressed the loudest outrage, where they were quietly buried. They also, of course, exacted a cost in department morale, as leak sleuths roamed the corridors and called employees to basement interrogation cells like so many wired-up Inspector Javerts.
That’s what the Trump machine has unleashed upon Washington, according to a generally overlooked story reported by The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Hannah Natanson on Monday. The hypocrisy of the Signalgate crew here is palpable.
Of course, FBI Director Kash Patel, whose campaign to root out the “deep state” animated his campaign for a top national security job in the Trump regime, has embraced the so-called “lie detector” initiative, which seems prompted by the embarrassing revelations of—wait for it—leaky security behavior by top national security officials.
“The seriousness of the specific leaks in question precipitated the polygraphs, as they involved potential damage to security protocols at the bureau,” said an unidentified spokesperson, apparently blithely insensitive to the probe’s rationale.
Putting aside the absurdity of the campaign, though, I wonder if Patel & co. are aware of long standing questions about how effective polygraphs are.
Stein goes on to discuss, among other things, polygraphy’s scientific shortcomings, the Aldrich Ames espionage case, and the attendant dangers of reliance on polygraph screening. He includes an especially insightful observation about leak investigations in general:
Decades ago, a wise and long serving Justice Department inspector general remarked to me that leak investigations were “a fool’s errand.” By that he meant that they rarely ended in criminal investigations and often led back to the offices of political appointees who had expressed the loudest outrage, where they were quietly buried. They also, of course, exacted a cost in department morale, as leak sleuths roamed the corridors and called employees to basement interrogation cells like so many wired-up Inspector Javerts.
Small wonder that there is no documented instance of the polygraph ever solving a federal leak investigation.
Update: Military.com has published the full text of Stein’s article.